Homecoming

First come jubilant skeins of of geese flying in from the south and singing their return, then ducks splashing about in the melted alcoves of local rivers and streams. There is a lot of happy quacking in roadside ditches and puddles.

A single heron perches on the frozen shore of Dalhousie Lake and wonders why on earth she has come home so early in the season. Trumpeter swans and loons will not return for weeks, until there is more open water.

On the Two Hundred Acre Wood, there are larks and killdeer, beaky snipe and woodcock, a handful of plucky robins, the graceful "v" shapes (dihedrals) of turkey vultures soaring majestically over the trees and rocks and rocking effortlessly back and forth in their flight. From below, the light catches their silvery flight feathers and dark wing linings, and the great birds are as magnificent as any eagle.

A solitary goshawk perches in a bare tree on the hill, and a male harrier describes perfect, languid circles over the western field. Both birds are hungry after their long journey north, and they train their fierce yellow eyes on the artfully frosted field below, always on the lookout for a good meal.

This morning, a male cardinal is singing his heart out in the ash tree in the garden, and an unidentified warbler lifts its voice somewhere in the darkness.

Even the weather foretold for this day will be a friend.

Happy April, everyone! 

Sequestered, Week 258 (CCLVIII)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

I believe that the ability of human beings to be creative depends fundamentally on the health and well-being of our biosphere, the few kilometres of air, water, and soil that surround our planet like the skin of an apple. Quite simply, they are the physical and spiritual bases of our lives, and the only source of materials and tools that enable us to express our responses to questions and feelings about ultimate things. Creation and creativity are inextricably linked.

Freeman Patterson

The Waning Moon in Her Journey

Friday Ramble - On Our Way

Beyond our windows this morning are clouds, drifting fog and a forlorn copse of skeletal maples and ashes doing their best to put out leaves, catkins and flowers. Alas, springtime is late this time around, and the tree people have a long way to go before they leaf out fully, but they are working on it.

In the street, a cold wind cavorts in the gutters, ruffles dead leaves and other detritus like playing cards. It eases around the corner of the little blue house in the village and sets the copper wind bells on the deck in exuberant motion. So ardent is the wind's caress that sometimes the bells are almost parallel to the ground.

The air is warmer than the still frozen ground below, and the meeting of the two elements stirs up something magical. Somewhere in the early murk, a few robins sing their pleasure, and a woodpecker (probably a pileated from the volume of its hammering) is driving its formidable beak into an old birch. Now and again, he (or possibly she) pauses, takes a few deep breaths and gives an unfettered laugh that carries for quite a distance. Even a bird in the fog, it seems, knows the value of taking a break from its work now and again, just breathing in and out for a minute or two and giving voice to a cackle of raucous amusement.

I can't see either the caroling robins or my whomping woodpecker, but that is all right. Their voices are welcome musical elements in a morning that is all about the nebulous, the wondrous, the mysterious and unseen.

In the kitchen, coffee is in progress and and a little Mozart (The Magic Flute) fills the air, but something more is needed. Miracle of miracles, yellow crocus are blooming in the protected southern corner of a neighbor's garden. The little dears are lit from within, and I swear, they light up the whole village.

Thursday Poem - Return

Through the weeks of deep snow
we walked above the ground
on fallen sky, as though we did
not come of root and leaf, as though
we had only air and weather
for our difficult home.
But now
as March warms, and the rivulets
run like birdsong on the slopes,
and the branches of light sing in the hills,
slowly we return to earth.

Wendell Berry

Wordless Wednesday - Morning Rite

Little by Little, Returning

And so the dance begins. It starts with a pair of geese, not a skein or a flock or a "v", just two magnificent Canadas paddling in a pool of melted river in the sunlight.

It continues with a Sharp-shinned Hawk etching wide circles in the sky over the same stretch of river and emitting a short, sharp, joyous cry now and then.

A drowsy groundhog perches on a fence post and looks around in disbelief. No doubt he (or she) is appalled by all the snow still on the ground and is considering going back to sleep for several weeks. There should be much more grass showing by now.

In a nearby spinney, three glossy deer shuffle their feet and drink in the morning, their breath sending up clouds of steam in the cold air.

Not far away, juvenile male turkeys (jakes) are strutting their stuff and proclaiming their superiority, gobbling, puffing up their plumage, spreading their tails and dragging their wings along the ground—they are doing the turkey version of what I like to call "the antler dance". The birds are too young to mate, but they are practising their courtship and dominance displays for next year and (no doubt), they are being critiqued by their assembled fellows. The performances are hilarious. 

Sequestered, Week 257 (CCLVII)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment. 

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Hallelujah, They're Back!

Friday Ramble - Melt

This week's word has been around since before 900, coming to us through the Middle English melten, Old English meltan, mealt and gemæltan all meaning to liquify and (or) digest. It's cognate with the Old Norse melta and Greek méldein meaning much the same thing, then the Proto Germanic meltanan and West Saxon gemyltan meaning "to make liquid". All or most of the forms in existence spring from the Proto Indo-European (PIE) root form meld meaning "softness" or "to render soft". The study of word origins is a fine thing.

Strange as it may seem, the word malt is also kin to this week’s ramble offering. In the malting process, barley is soaked, softened and drained to release enzymes used in brewing beer, and the result is called malt (or wort). The curious relation between melt and malt can be explained simply by the fact that both involve softening. On the other hand, the similar sounding verb meld "to dissolve, blend or mingle" originates in the Old High German melden, "to announce" and the Old English meldian, "to make known", and it is not kin. The term is used mainly in card games, particularly canasta.

In recent days, we watched hopefully as icicles depending from the eaves of the little blue house in the village melted away, little by little. We grow some fabulous icicles up here, and a favorite springtime exercise is wandering about with the camera and photographing them as they dwindle at their lofty moorings, turn skinny and then disappear into the earth, drop by shining drop.

There are tiny worlds too numerous to imagine in the icicles dangling over our heads and in the streams below our feet. The greater world around us and its multitudes of miniscule universes are complete within themselves and teeming with life and enchantment, all wrapped up together and happy with the arrangement.

Sometimes melting ice holds the doddering photographer and her camera. Other times, it is filled with sky, clouds, bare trees and tiny sprigs of emerging greenery—all are expressions of this madcap season when vibrant new life is coming into being. The Old Wild Mother (Earth) creates finer "stuff" than I shall ever be able to dream up, but that is quite all right. I just wander around and chronicle her doings with lens and notebook and a perpetually stunned expression.

Happy Vernal Equinox (Ostara)

For the Vernal Equinox (Ostara)

Tomorrow marks the Vernal Equinox or Ostara, one of two times in the calendar year (the other being the Autumn Equinox or Mabon) when the Earth and her unruly children hover in perfect balance for a brief interval.

Humans have nothing to do with the origins of this day, a pivotal astronomic point ordained by the natural order of things in the cosmos. On both equinoxes, the Sun is right above the equator, and its annual pathway (the ecliptic) intersects with the celestial equator. Day and night are equal length. We like to say that the Sun is passing over the equator, but it is we and our planet who are in motion, not the magnificent star at the center of our universe.

If I lived further south, tomorrow might be a day of greening and enchantment, a day when Eostre, the old Teutonic goddess of greening and fertility, wanders wild places with her arms full of spring blooms, bestowing blessings on everything she sees. Flowers would spring up in her footsteps as she passed, and she would be attended by hares, her special animal,. The air would be filled with birdsong, with the heady fragrance of rich dark earth and wild springtime herbs.

Alas, the only snowdrops blooming here at the moment are those in a glass jar in my study. It will be a week or two until Lady Spring turns up and decides to stay for a while, but rumors of her imminent arrival persist. It has been a long winter this time around, and Eostre can't show up too soon for me. Our winter birds feel the same. Every feathered visitor to our sleeping garden seems to be declaring its lofty status as a messenger from the sacred, a harbinger of abundance and new life.

In the wee hours of this morning, Beau and I went outside into the garden for a few minutes, and a cold going it was. As we shivered in the star spangled darkness and looked up, it seemed to us that the waning moon bore more than a passing resemblance to a great cosmic egg, a perfect expression of this turning of the wheel with its verdant motifs of warmth, light and new life coming into being.

There is blooming in our thoughts, but it is too cold here for outdoor celebrations, and our festivities are indoors for the most part, a festive lunch with a dear friend, the exchange of gifts, tea and an afternoon of happy natter. Pancakes, berries, whipped cream and local maple syrup are on the menu this year. Yum.

Happy Equinox! Blessings of the season to one and all.

Rain and Robins Returning

Skies are cloudy, and a gentle rain is falling outside the windows. Beau and I are doing tea and listening to raindrops hitting the roof of the garden shed in a fine staccato rhythm, to clumps of snow falling off the peaked rooflines of nearby houses. The watery motifs of two seasons are rolled into one this soggy morning.

Mr. B. does not care much for wet weather, and he is curled up in a corner of the sofa, grumbling. He does, however, appreciate a fine puddle, and there are lagoons in the village deep enough and wide enough for him to swim around in circles. That will cheer him up immensely when we go out for a walk later.

A murmuration of starlings is hanging out in the cedar hedge, and the wily birds are pretending they are something else entirely, cardinals, robins, house finches, song sparrows. What is wrong with just being a starling? A few robins are back, and they have been visiting the garden this week. At sunrise, one was perched high in the ash in the corner, singing his (or her) pleasure in the day and calling for more rain.

Perhaps it is time for a new wreath on the front door, something with sprigs of pussy willow and eggs (fake of course) in pastel colours. Rain or no, a graceful nod to Eostre and a small ritual gesture of some sort is called for.

Tobar Phadric (for St. Patrick's Day)

Turn sideways into the light as they say
the old ones did and disappear
into the originality of it all.

Be impatient with easy explanations
and teach that part of the mind
that wants to know everything
not to begin questions it cannot answer.

Walk the green road above the bay

and the low glinting fields

toward the evening sun, let that Atlantic

gleam be ahead of you and the gray light

of the bay below you, until you catch,

down on your left, the break in the wall,

for just above in the shadows

you’ll find it hidden, a curved arm

of rock holding the water close to the mountain,

a just-lit surface smoothing a scattering of coins,

and in the niche above, notes to the dead

and supplications for those who still live.

But for now, you are alone with the transfiguration

and ask no healing for your own

but look down as if looking through time,

as if through a rent veil from the other

side of the question you’ve refused to ask.

And you remember now, that clear stream

of generosity from which you drank,

how as a child your arms could rise and your palms

turn out to take the blessing of the world.

David Whyte, from River Flow
(with permission) 

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

Belonging so fully to yourself that you're willing to stand alone is a wilderness—an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching. It is a place as dangerous as it is breathtaking, a place as sought after as it is feared. The wilderness can often feel unholy because we can't control it, or what people think about our choice of whether to venture into that vastness or not. But it turns out to be the place of true belonging, and it's the bravest and most sacred place you will ever stand.

Brené Brown

In the Woods, Sweetness

Friday Ramble - Journey

Journey comes from the Middle English journei, meaning day (or day's travel), through the Old French jornee and Vulgar Latin diurnta, then the Late Latin diurnum (meaning day), or perhaps the neuter form of the Latin diurnus, meaning daily or "of a day". The word claims kinship with journal, diurnal, and diary which comes to us from the Latin diārium meaning daily allowance or record. Somewhere in there too and predating 950 CE by a fair interval are the Middle English dæg; and the Germanic tag. At the beginning of it all is the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root *dhegh- "to burn".

The word harks back to the long ago time when we moved from place to place on our own two feet and measured our barefoot progress by the amount of daylight involved in doing so. There are some lovely synonyms for this week's word in our language: adventure, campaign, caravan, expedition, exploration, migration, odyssey, passage, peregrination, pilgrimage, quest, ramble, roaming, roving, safari, sally, seeking, sojourn, transmigration, vagabondage, voyage, wandering and wayfaring.

Journeying is not simply getting from one place to another place. When I say the word (and I am fond of it), I don't think of trips to school or marketplace, but of childhood rambles and a clear sense even then that life was an adventure unfolding - that something grand, magical and illuminating awaited behind the next tree or around a bend on the trail ahead. My younger self spent hours watching leaves float down rivers of windfall light, how light turned the whole world dazzling gold as the sun went down at the end of the day.  A mere sapling has no words for such things, but feelings of wonder and possibility tugged at my sensibilities,. "Ready or not, here I come, seeking something magical, mysterious and incandescent, I know not what."

From her early adventures, that odd little girl moved on into college, adulthood, work, marriage, parenting, all the inevitable bumps and potholes in the shambolic road of life. Oh, there were snippets of fey knowing here and there, but the midlife journey often seemed to be "arrow straight" and running toward a flat horizon, nary a tree, a hill, a cantrip or a mystery in sight.

I am older now, and I am (hopefully) a little wiser for all my meanderings. In these creaky, eldering days, I think about the wind blowing through the trees of my native place, of sunrises seen from the cliffs above Dalhousie Lake. I think of migrating geese and drifting fogs in early morning, the way clouds seen from heights often seem to form a sparkling road - one spiralling right out into the great beyond. There are glorious sunsets to be seen if one climbs a mountain at twilight, but they can be viewed from the shoreline too, often in the company of herons.

Here I am again, watching leaves float down the river in season, haunting shorelines with a camera and trying to capture that twilight moment when the world seems to be spun out of gold. The childhood sense of journeying and mystery that seemed to vanish during my frantic middling years has returned and so have my dreams. There are islands in the sky at sunrise, tall wooden ships bound for faraway places and unknown adventures in the offing, eldritch musics offered in the voices of the sirens.

Childhood rambles, my university years, and the straightforward thoroughfares of middle life are behind me, and these eldering days are about community, wildness, and grace unfolding. May there be joy and enchantment on your journey. May there be wonder and adventures in your life, and may there be light.

Thursday Poem - Another Spring

The seasons revolve and the years change

With no assistance or supervision.

The moon, without taking thought,

Moves in its cycle, full, crescent, and full.

The white moon enters the heart of the river;

The air is drugged with azalea blossoms;

Deep in the night a pine cone falls;

Our campfire dies out in the empty mountains.

The sharp stars flicker in the tremulous branches;

The lake is black, bottomless in the crystalline night;

High in the sky the Northern Crown

Is cut in half by the dim summit of a snow peak.

O heart, heart, so singularly

Intransigent and corruptible,

Here we lie entranced by the starlit water,

And moments that should each last forever

Slide unconsciously by us like water.

Kenneth Rexroth

(Translation of a poem by Tu Fu)

Wordless Wednesday - World Within

Crocus Thoughts

Snow fell in the village in the wee hours of yesterday morning, no surprise at this time of the year. One may reasonably expect the long white season to lurk in the shadows and make unforeseen appearances until late April, sometimes well into May. I remember a not so long ago year when snow and a killing frost wiped out our newborn veggie patch on the first day of June, and we had to start over. 

When winter finally retreats, the woods green up rapidly, and within a short time the whole forest is carpeted in bloodroot, trilliums, trout lilies, tiny hepatica and violets. No quiet and subtle entrance here for Lady Spring, but a loud, triumphant fanfare and running footsteps, an explosion of shaggy green leafage in local hedgerows, a riotous, profusion of spring blooms bursting forth, almost within minutes.

In my sleep last night, Beau and I wandered along in a cloud of wildflowers and lacy green ferns, listened to a throng of  grosbeaks singing in the overstory, watched an osprey hunting over the Clyde river. Sigh, early days yet. Dreams will have to sustain us for another several weeks—at present the woods are a realm of deep snow and inky blue shadows, and so they will remain for quite a while.

I think wistfully of putting my hands in the warm dark earth of the garden with a trowel, but the place is still three feet deep in snow and so it will be for a while. For now, potted tulips and crocus thoughts will have to do.

Sequestered, Week 255 (CCLV)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

I breathe in the soft, saturated exhalations of cedar trees and salmonberry bushes, fireweed and wood fern, marsh hawks and meadow voles, marten and harbor seal and blacktail deer. I breathe in the same particles of air that made songs in the throats of hermit thrushes and gave voices to humpback whales, the same particles of air that lifted the wings of bald eagles and buzzed in the flight of hummingbirds, the same particles of air that rushed over the sea in storms, whirled in high mountain snows, whistled across the poles, and whispered through lush equatorial gardens…air that has passed continually through life on earth. I breathe it in, pass it on, share it in equal measure with billions of other living things, endlessly, infinitely.

Richard Nelson, The Island Within

Thursday Poem - Summons

(for International Women's Day)

Last night I dreamed

ten thousand grandmothers
from the twelve hundred corners of the earth
walked out into the gap
one breath deep
between the bullet and the flesh
between the bomb and the family.

They told me we cannot wait for governments.

There are no peacekeepers boarding planes.

There are no leaders who dare to say

every life is precious, so it will have to be us.

They said we will cup our hands around each heart.

We will sing the earth’s song, the song of water,

a song so beautiful that vengeance will turn to weeping.

The mourners will embrace, and grief replace

every impulse toward harm.

Ten thousand is not enough, they said,

so, we have sent this dream, like a flock of doves

into the sleep of the world. Wake up. Put on your shoes.

You who are reading this, I am bringing bandages

and a bag of scented guavas from my trees. I think

I remember the tune. Meet me at the corner.

Let’s go.

Aurora Levin Morales 

 

When Winter Returns

Order a beaker of something ambrosial at your local coffee shop. Sip it slowly. 

Pretend the weather is balmy and the trees have leafed out, that the overstory is lavishly tenanted by songbirds. 

Think about gardening. Imagine roses and herbs in bloom, veggies coming up, the bee garden filled with little sisters going about their work.

Remember sunlight and warmth. Breathe deeply. Cradle the light within.

Friday Ramble - Getting Through March, Sheepishly

March came in like a lioness, and then the lioness stepped away for a few days. In her absence, plucky birds paired off amorously, and village starlings sang merrily, pretending they were robins and enjoying the pretense. It rained, and for a day or two, there was the possibility of a maple syrup run. Thoughts of springtime danced in my sconce, and there were gardening magazines, agricultural annuals, nursery catalogs and seed packets on every surface in the house.

Alas, the halcyon days were brief. Winter made a gleeful return late yesterday, the north wind howling in the rafters and tossing heaps of snow against the doors of the garden shed. There were clouds of blowing snow, and clumps, tumps and desiccated grasses vanished after their fleeting emergence out of the white stuff. Snowdrifts took a deep sigh of relief and stopped melting. Overnight, the village became a sea of ice, and walking this morning is worrisome, downright treacherous.

In other years, migratory birds had returned by now, but Canada geese, ducks, herons and loons will be late coming home this year because there is no open water anywhere and nothing for them to eat. On walks, we listen for them anyway.

What is one to do at such times? I drink copious amounts of espresso and tea. I spend a lot of time reading and scribbling. In the wee hours, I plot new bee gardens and beds of roses, research heirloom vegetables, lay out the design for another quilt. I cultivate forbearance and don't look out the window when snow falls again, hoping ardently that Lady March will get her act together and morph into a lamb, darn it.

At the end of winter, one becomes a tad maudlin. When a friend in the Lanark Highlands told me a few days ago that lambs are now being born in her magnificent old log barn, I was sad. I felt sorry for the poor wee beasties who were coming into the world in such bleak circumstances. What a harrowing start to life.

Enough is enough. Rain would be just fine, and it is certainly easier to shovel than snow. There is one thing about the weather though - night skies are fabulous when they are clear. There are flaming sunsets and moons one can almost reach up and touch, planets dancing in the sky at dusk, dippers of starlight strewn by handfuls from vast, streaming cosmic cauldrons. Simply magnificent.

While I was outside this morning shoveling the veranda, a friend walked by with her Labrador (Sunny) and stopped to talk for a few minutes. We had not seen much of each other in recent weeks, and it was pleasant to stand there (shuffling from foot to foot in the cold) and catch up. I think I can hang in for a while longer.

Thursday Poem - You Can't Be Too Careful

Spring storm and hail of ice cubes
pummels my town and no other.
There was a time when townspeople
would call this fall the wrath of God
or work of witches. A lower profile
may have saved some crones
renowned for bitter herbs, odd dames
you went to in the woods for troubles.
But some would go on being busybodies
and scolds dragged out, dunked, drowned
or hung like limp, forgotten fruit
from gallows trees. Scarecrows and
cautionary tales. And truly the crows
flee from our town screaming
blue murder, scarier than a siren.
Even in these enlightened times,
some of us still go warily,
keeping secret our wild simples,
asking nothing for our quirky blessings.

Dolores Stewart Riccio
(from The Nature of Things)

Wordless Wednesday - Reflection

Birch Mother in the Wind

Paper birch (Betula papyrifera)

also called White birch or Canoe birch

Here we are on the cusp between winter and springtime, weary of ice and snowdrifts, craving light and warmth. There is still a lot of snow about, and the weather is cold, icy winds scouring the bare trees and making the branches ring like old iron bells. Perhaps that is to be expected, for springtime is a puckish wight this far north. After making a brief appearance, she often disappears for several weeks and doesn't show up again until the end of March or the beginning of April.

For all that, March days have a wonderful way of quieting one's thoughts and breathing rhythms, bringing her back to a still and reflective space in the heart of the living world. The Old Wild Mother (Earth) is haggard and tattered, but she takes us in and holds us close. She shelters us and soothes us. She comforts us. 

I sat on a log in the woods a few days ago, watching as scraps of birch bark fluttered back and forth in the north wind. When my breath slowed and my mind became still, the lines etched in the tree's paper were words written in a language I could almost understand. When the morning sun slipped out from behind the clouds, rays of sunlight passed through the blowing endments and turned them golden and translucent, for all the world like elemental stained glass.

When I touched the old tree in greeting, my fingers came away with a dry springtime sweetness on them that lingered for hours. I tucked a thin folio of bark in the pocket of my parka and inhaled its wild fragrance all the way home.